Assignment:
Academic & Professional Discourse Analysis
This assignment engages you in academic and literacy development about and within your chosen discipline.
Description
This unit focuses on engaging you with the types of writing done in your intended major. Your academic and professional discourse analysis will explore your major in detail, help you discover the conventions and expectations of those in your discourse community, and examine the varieties of writing done by professionals in your intended field. You are welcome to use information you have gathered through previous assignments to complete this paper.
Expectations
This assignment requires you to investigate the writing done in your major field of study. You will write five-to-seven pages, formatted according to MLA guidelines.You are expected to write about thisin prose form, as an essay, not just find/copy/paste the information. You are expected to use a variety of print and online sources, but you MUST also interview ONE person working in your chosen field. Interviews can be conducted in person, by phone, or via email, and you must prepare discussion questions and topics in advance.Your paper should include the following:
1. An introduction that tells readers about your field/major, in general, and then specifically what you want to do in that field.
2. A review of the academic requirements for that goal. What degree, programs, classes, certificates, etc., are required of those in the field? What/where are the best schools for those degrees? What are their requirements to get into those programs (GPA, Standardized tests, etc.)? How do you measure up to those standards?
3. After you transfer, what types of writing will you be required to do in order to successfully complete your classes or your degree program? What writing-intensive courses will you be required to take for your major (look at the class descriptions for the required classes)? Is there a capstone project or senior project or presentation requirement? If so, what are those requirements?
4. What are the two most important journals in your field? These may or may not come from your annotated bibliography assignment. For each, tell readers how often, where/by whom, and in what format (print, digital, etc) they are published, and a description of their readership. Then, for each, look through a current publication and explain the types of articles published in each. Are they profiles, lab reports, studies? What are the topics? How do they correlate to what you've learned about in the landmark texts you annotated? How long are the articles? How are they laid out/designed? Finally, explain the process someone must follow in order to submit an article for publication. Where is it submitted (in person, via email, online through a submission link)? Can anyone submit, or do you have to be invited to submit? What are the deadlines? Are article submissions peer-reviewed?
5. What type of writing is done by professionals in your field, outside of academia? What types of writing will you be expected to do in your field after you get your degree? What are the expectations of those genres? Who will be in your primary audience?
6. What qualities do successful people in your field exhibit (think about concrete things, like attire, books, possessions, etc. and also about abstract things, like knowledge, values, beliefs, etc.)? What are the critical traits and behaviors of your professional discourse community?
7. Finally, what is the job market like for those seeking employment in the field? Are jobs available? What kind of jobs and at what level? Where are the jobs (in what regions of the country)? Who are the biggest employers for your chosen field? Locate at least two job openings in your field and discuss the expectations of those employers, the salary and benefits, and the overall job satisfaction of those working in the field. LinkedIn.com, BLS.gov, and Glassdoor.com are excellent sources for this information.
8. A conclusion that summarizes the most important things you found out during this investigation.
9. Parenthetical or in-text documentation and aWorks Cited page formatted according to MLA guidelines.
Other Resources
The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University offers extensive help with writing tasks, and is home to easy-to-navigate formatting and citation information for APA and MLA. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/